


december never felt so wrong

by c_libretto



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, wee bit of fluff too i guess idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 21:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_libretto/pseuds/c_libretto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thousands of miles apart, with only ten seconds to a brand new year. </p>
<p>He wants to hold out for another 365 days of LukeandMichael, but as the winter chill creeps into the narrow opening of his sleeves, past his already long-numbed hands and travelling up to his forearms, he feels the loneliest he’s ever been and the possibility of it seems far, far,</p>
<p>far away. </p>
<p>(or, Luke tries to cope with Michael potentially not feeling the same way Luke does about him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	december never felt so wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I wrote on a whim after listening to Kina Grannis and Zee Avi's cover of Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. First ever shot at Clemmings so hope you like! Happy New Year's Eve/New Year, everyone :)

Hushed whispers were never Ashton and/or Calum’s strong suit, so every time they walk past Luke’s door, he has to pretend that he can’t comprehend anything of what they’re saying.

Most of the time the words end up slipping into his ears anyway, especially when he’s not playing his guitar or turning up the volume of the TV loud enough to drown them out. They’re always tinged with worry and remorse, and occasionally Luke hears sentences like, “d’you think he’s alright?” or “he hasn’t come out all day” and he takes good care to close the half-open door after they’re gone so he wouldn’t have to repeat the same mistake of hearing them the next time they walk on by.

From the start of December, he’d been speaking a lot less than usual, but what was more obvious was that he hadn’t been eating his normally large portions of food and that, his friends had decided, was the ultimate warning sign that something was truly wrong with him. Since then, they’d started to tread carefully around him, walking on eggshells and constantly holding back from their usual puerile humour and most of all, they’re taking extra caution to avoid saying Michael’s name whenever Luke’s around.

It’s not like he doesn’t appreciate Ashton and Calum’s concern, but Luke desperately wants to tell them that it’s okay, that he can handle it, really, because he’s not _that_ fragile. One mention of a two-syllable name isn’t going to smash him into smithereens.

He’s alright, he really is.

Except for when his mind starts conjuring memories that date back to November and all of the months before that and then he’s filled with a lonely sort of ache that even he can’t convince himself to ignore. He tells this to Ashton and Calum sometimes, when he can’t take it all on his own. They sympathise, empathise with him as much as they can, which is why the three of them are all the way in New York right now, on New Year’s Eve – apparently a plan hatched by the two to take Luke away on a holiday of sorts as a distraction from his thoughts of him and Michael and everything they’d had in between.

The flight was scheduled exactly a week after Christmas.

Luke doesn’t feel much like it is a holiday for him, but rather a Calum+Ashton getaway that he somehow has gotten to tag along with as a somewhat reluctant captive of theirs. He never knew whether Michael had refused to join or he simply just wasn’t invited. Either way, the distance between New York and Sydney is a long one, and Luke misses him, even though he probably should try not to.

Things, if Luke were to put it in the simplest way, had been complicated between him and Michael.

But then again, he supposes he couldn’t have expected a happy ending for the two of them when it’d started off the way it did. Maybe it’s his fault that he’d chosen to forget that developing romantic feelings for a bandmate, as the whole world probably is aware of, never ends quite neatly as hoped.

(Calum tells him that’s it’s not, that it’s just Michael being an idiot about the whole ordeal, but Luke’s not so sure. He’s certain that even if Calum and Ashton are pretty much joined at the hip, they didn’t have the same connection as he did with Michael, and that neither of them would completely understand the situation he’s in.)

It was good while it lasted, though.

_LukeandMichael_ was more or less the product of ‘Cashton’’s abandonment – they were always left behind with an abundance of snacks and video games and leisure time as the other two traipsed about wherever the hell they wanted, so it ended up being always just Luke and Michael and no one else around in one of the two hotel rooms at every leg of the tour they were on. They were the explorers of the great indoors, and their union had been driven by lots of lazing around and cuddling up to each other’s warmth as time would tick by slowly until the sun came down, which was typically when Calum and Ashton would’ve come back from their own adventures outdoors.

Luke and Michael were a perfect fit in that sense.

And it wasn’t a secret that Team Cashton were big supporters of the two, always making teasing remarks about the two being “hibernating bunnies all too glad to huddle in their little love nest”, which, obviously, always results in a blushing Luke and a flustered Michael chasing them around, armed with one of Luke’s thongs in his hand.

So when Luke ended up kissing Michael for the first time, the time frame being somewhere a little after Michael’s birthday, it hadn’t been a complete surprise to anyone at all.

“Birthday boy,” Luke had called him after their lips had parted with a light smack, in obliviousness as to what else to say. Michael just laughed in response.

Then for possibly the first time in his entire life, Michael abandoned his ongoing game for something else, and that evening was devoted entirely to more kissing and being generally cheesy sweethearts with each other, just as Ashton had long earlier predicted.

“Yuck!” Ashton made a face at the sight of the two anyway, leaving the room in disgust just as abruptly as he’d entered. Calum followed suit, stifling his laughter with a fist stuffed in his mouth.

What had caught everyone off-guard, though, was how quickly Michael’s withdrawal had been, the sixth day after 20th November marking the start of his blatant avoiding of his bandmates, especially Luke. No one knew exactly why he’d started to act cold towards them, and there had been countless of times in which every single one of them had tried to talk to him about it, but he was good at dodging each confrontation, so every attempt at getting to clear things up with him was futile.

It was all the harder when they’d finished touring mid-December, returning to their respective homes for the upcoming holiday season so they wouldn’t be able to catch even a glimpse of each other, busying themselves with their own families and preparations for Christmas Day.

Luke’s the most confused one of them all, being actually part of the problem, or at least that’s the way he sees it. He doesn’t ever get a return call or a reply when he texts Michael, even on Christmas Day, and that’s when he thinks it’s actually going to be over for good.

“He’ll come around,” Ashton had consoled him over the phone on Boxing Day, and Luke doesn’t doubt that, even now, but it still frustrates him how there seems to be a lack of explanations for Michael’s behaviour, especially since it’s managed to already break them so far apart before it – whatever it was that they’d shared – had even properly started. It seems like when they finally get together as a band again, it’s going to start off awkward, and once that starts to slowly but surely melt away, everything would go back to the way it was. That is, before _LukeandMichael_ started becoming a possibility.

And Luke tries to be satisfied with that, because at least they’ll be a normal band again, but yet he’s not. He liked, no, _likes_ what he had with Michael, and the thought of Michael not feeling the same way is kind of making him hurt quite a bit.

At the current moment, he’s all bundled up in layers of shirts and sweaters to keep himself warm, gripping the railing of the balcony and he waits. He decides he’ll join Ashton and Calum downstairs in a little while.

Thousands of miles apart, with only ten seconds to a brand new year.

He wants to hold out for another 365 days of _LukeandMichael_ , but as the winter chill creeps into the narrow opening of his sleeves, past his already long-numbed hands and travelling up to his forearms, he feels the loneliest he’s ever been and the possibility of it seems far, far,

far away.

“ONE!!!”

The sound of fireworks that follows is hugely unmistakeable, as well as Ashton and Calum’s excited prattling from the floor below – the both of them no doubt hanging onto the railings of the lower balcony as they witness the grandeur of the official welcoming of the new year. Luke doesn’t move from his position, lets the noise contradict his own feelings because he’s not the type to spoil everyone else’s mood just because he’s not in a cheery one himself.

He watches the bursts of vivid colours, trying to find joy in every spark of bright light, but there’s no way he can fool himself out of the state of melancholy he’s in. No matter how hard he tries and tries to defy it, the mixture of coldness and misery forms thin, spidery cracks on the veneer that is Luke’s hope for another chance at being Michael’s – and _only_ Michael’s – again.


End file.
